"saving a file" apears to work - but doesn't in Autocad 2010

[tsdrafting]

This is my first time posting a problem.   About 2 weeks ago I opened up a file to work on in AutoCAD 2010 - and it did not save since my last time I worked on it a few days prior.  I lost about an hour of work - no big deal, but a little frustrated.  The same day I had another file with the same thing.

Then about 3 days after  that - same thing, and two weeks later - same thing.  Meanwhile all the other projects in the meantime have been just fine.

I get no error messages, nothing weird or out of the ordinary happening - these are just little "surprises" when I open the files.  And of course, once they are discovered - it is too late to do anything.

I back up daily - and check my backups for a Hopeful better version - but the backups are missing all the information as well.

Does anyone have any explanation for this?  OR has anyone else experienced this?   IT is frustrating to say the least.  I have only lost about 4 hours of work - so it is not the end of the world.   But I am starting to get paranoid when I work on a file and complete it - that the next time I open it that I will be missing a day or work or something.

All comments welcome.

[pendean]

Not enough information:
where are you saving the files to? how do you connect to it?
what happens if you save them somewhere else?
what changed recently with your setup? R2010 is not 6-years old. Find out, could be your PC or your network or where your files are located.
Windows OS?

[tsdrafting]

Thanks for asking questions I never thought of to mention.  The answers are in red

where are you saving the files to?   local C Drive

how do you connect to it?  As stated above

what happens if you save them somewhere else?  I didn't think I would have too.  I go through a lot of files in one day - opening and closing multiple files whenever someone calls or eeds a quick change.  Most of the files are in tact with noi issues - just random files seem to be missing information.

what changed recently with your setup?   Nothing changed.  Some windows updates, Norton antivirus updates, that is about it

Windows OS?   Windows 7 Professional

I work from home, so there is no network.  I back up daily to a thumbdrive, and weekly to an external hard drive.  I looked at my backups on both drives and they were missing the information.

[whitney_jeff]

are you using save or quicksave?
What is your autosave set at and is it enabled?
A habit you might want to get into is to save to a slightly different filename (or saveas) then save that back over your original - as long as it captures your work.

[pendean]

Thanks.

"local C drive" is not informative: are you saving to MY DOCUMENTS, desktop folders, top level C: drive folders etc.

Are you using QSAVE? Do you have BAK file creation turned on? What happens if you use SAVE command and hit <enter> twice? Are you actually watching the folder and seeing the time stamps change when you QSAVE or SAVE and hit <enter> twice?

Whether you feel you have to or not, can you save to an alternate location and remove any doubts you are actually saving the file over and over again? Again, this is just a test for a short period of time.

What is ISAVEPERCENT system variable set to? zero is the best setting. Change it to zero and QSAVE.

Note: there is never ever a cure or fix for "just random files seem to be missing information", sadly 99% of the time that is a user-based error, could be as simple as just not noticing a brief alert or prompt in the daily rush of "go through a lot of files in one day".

[tsdrafting]

"local C drive" is not informative: are you saving to MY DOCUMENTS, desktop folders, top level C: drive folders etc. I have a directory setup named "Autocad Files" and within that I have subdirectories with builders/client names.  Within the builder directories I have projects setup by addresses.

Are you using QSAVE?   I use either the save icon in the upper left of my menues or else I do the "s + enter" for quick save.  Either way - I see the progreess of the save for a split second on my screen.

Do you have BAK file creation turned on?  Yes I do.  I have it setup to go to a specificicdirectory for fast acccess.  I have autosave turned on to save every 3 minutes (I work fast and can get a lot of things done in 3 minutes).

What happens if you use SAVE command and hit <enter> twice? Are you actually watching the folder and seeing the time stamps change when you QSAVE or SAVE and hit <enter> twice?   Yes - I see the save progress each time I do this

to an alternate location and remove any doubts you are actually saving the file over and over again? Again, this is just a test for a short period of time.

What is ISAVEPERCENT system variable set to? zero is the best setting. Change it to zero and QSAVE.  it was set to 50% - but after reading abou **** in the help file I set it to 0% for a full save each time.

Most likely it was somethign I did to trigger this error, but I have no idea what I am doign diffferent.  I don't think it has happened since (for the last 2 weeks), but I guess I won't really know until I open every file I have worked on in teh last 2 weeks and confirm.

Thanks for all suggestions - hopefully this makes a difference and prevents it from happening again.

[pendean]

Forget autosave: it doesn't do what you think it does. It exists solely to recover from a crash, if you are lucky and all things are aligned in space and the universe. It's not useful. It's unreliable. It doesn't save for you unless you are one of those people that NEVER manually saves EVER (in which case you should be taken out back and whipped hard LOL).

I think ISAVEPERCENT set to zero may be all you need to do moving forward. Keep an eye on it, if for whatever reason things act up disable the feature that relocated the BAK file and see if that helps any. Good luck.